


Flirtin' With Disaster

by NeighborhoodCatGang



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Bad Decisions, First Meetings, M/M, Modern AU, Motorcycle gang (sort of), ironic use of the word daddy, mentions of drugs & alcohol, sex in public bathrooms, well blowjobs actually but u get me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:54:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27691714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeighborhoodCatGang/pseuds/NeighborhoodCatGang
Summary: "When we gamble with our time we choose our destiny"The boys meet up sometime in their misspent youths.Set to Flirtin' With Disaster by Molly Hatchet.
Relationships: Bato/Hakoda (Avatar)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	Flirtin' With Disaster

**Author's Note:**

> I guess this is a songfic since I've had the title song stuck in my head for A MONTH, during which I wrote this.
> 
> I also hope it goes without saying, but these are not great decisions please don't do these things in real life. 
> 
> Content warnings for Mild Suicidal Ideation and Drug Use

Tepid water splashed halfheartedly over Hakoda’s face. It tasted like rust. If the dismal water pressure in the sink was any indication, he may as well just skip the dingy shower stall and try to make friends with the motel bed. His hair was filthy; greasy and covered in road dust where it wasn’t slicked down to his face from his halfhearted attempt at - what? Hygiene? Invigoration? Mental reset? All just as pointless as the shower. He would beat the worst of the dirt out of his jeans in the morning and that would be as good as he was getting. Nothing to be done about his face. The dark circles were permanent now, though they hadn’t been joined by any lines yet. The dust may as well be permanent. It always came back. Nothing to be done about his brain either, except wait until he was back with the Wolves. They had left him a hefty stash when they split, but that was his emergency fund for the foreseeable future. Coke wasn’t his thing anyways, and there was something almost pitiful about doing lines alone. He wasn’t that low yet. He kicked out of his boots before flopping onto the bed, knowing some room service gal would have to wash the linens, and not wanting to make her life harder. It took him two or three tries, but he found a black and white channel that wasn’t english. Sounded like spanish. There were about as many spanish channels as english here, wherever here was. Probably east Texas. The Wolves had spent most of winter in Miami, the sticky, unseasonable heat clinging to his skin and his lungs and the backs of his eyes. They’d spend spring in California, which was drier, but still too hot in most parts for his liking. Hopefully they’d head north for the summer. If he was really lucky, they’d stay north through fall and into winter. Northern winters on a motorcycle were brutal, punishing, and deadly. Hakoda was an idiot for wanting that, and they’d all tell him so. But he was sick of heat and sweat and other dark, sticky-skinned men who thought their fists and their steel and their drugs were dangerous. The pack had left before any hurricanes even hit the radar. That might have been real fun. But they were out of Florida not long after March rolled in, and now he was alone in Texas, waiting on an obscure yet annoyingly essential bike part, and trying not to die of boredom before something more interesting could kill him.

X

The sun finally vanished. That was the issue with riding west. You could go all night and straight through the morning, which he had done, but afternoons were utterly intolerable. Hakoda had spent the first part of the evening in a bar, acting convincingly more and more wasted and fleecing the locals for all he could get before the mood turned on him. The second half he’d spent at a truck stop a little ways north, sleeping behind the building with his jacket under his head and his arm thrown over his eyes. With the sky blazing red and gold, he’d wandered into the little diner, downed two coffees and an impressively greasy BLT, and paid in cash. The waitress didn’t even attempt to smile. He didn’t either, and left more tip than bill. Wasn’t his cash anyways.

Now the moon was coming up behind him and the air was starting to cool off. His bike rumbled smoothly between his knees. Desert flashed past on either side, flat and black and mysterious. He thought of that french word - it happened at the tops of tall buildings and whenever there was a sharp enough knife in his hands. What was it? When the edge was too close and something silky soft whispered ‘jump.’ It was happening again. The inky dark of the wild pulled at him and he wondered idly what would happen if he parked his bike here and walked off the road and never stopped. It would be hours before someone found the bike. Maybe days before anyone stopped to investigate. And one way or another he’d be gone. He didn’t court that feeling with its elusive french name. But it was the only gentle thing in his life. And just about the only way he was going to get a sweet whisper into his ear any time soon. So he didn’t fight it down. He just listened to the sweet nothings. 

When Hakoda stopped to relieve himself, and the quiet whisper rose to an insistent clamor, he smiled at the desert sky. Playing hard to get was always the best hustle for a certain type. But he didn’t think the moon paid cash. Then he spotted a spark, far away from the road, flickering warmly against the black. And since the only payout for hustling death was more life, he pulled his bike off the asphalt, stashed the key in a pocket, and started walking.

X

The man by the fire hadn’t said a word even when Hakoda walked up and sat down, just looked up sharply from skinning something small and fuzzy and no longer recognizable, and gotten back to work. The carcass was now roasting over the fire and Hakoda was staring openly at the man across from him, meticulously cleaning his knife. He looked young, not much older than himself, and weatherbeaten in the way he’d seen other wolves get on the road. His hair was dark and longer than Hakoda’s, spilling over his shoulders where it wasn’t pulled back in a tail. And he didn’t seem to be afraid. The pack’s habitually unkempt appearances usually set people on edge. 

They weren't a gang, even if most of anything they did was outside the law. Gangs had structure; leaders and objectives. The Wolves were too loose and wild even for that. Mostly they were brothers - best friend and worst enemy all in one - and they had no respect and no reason to look respectable.

“How’d you get out here?” He hadn’t spoken since ordering the BLT and his throat felt dry.

“Walked.” The man didn’t look up.

“Didn’t see another vehicle.”

“Hitchhiked first.”

“Where you headed?”

“West.” And hitchhiking. Interesting. He finally looked up and caught Hakoda’s eye. There was a smear of blood on his cheek. Firelight flashed in his eyes and the whisper burned away. Not a muscle moved. Nothing showed in his eyes but a sharp, enticing glitter. The black mystery of the desert couldn’t hold a candle to that impassive face. What would it take to get under his skin? Hell, what would it take to get under him? Hakoda would settle for either, handsome as he was. “You look like hell.”

“You have blood on your face.”

The man offered him half of the roasted desert critter. It tasted wild and smoky and halfway familiar. They sat until the fire guttered, then slept on either side of the coals until the sun appeared again.

Hakoda shook out his jacket and shrugged back into it. “I’m heading west if you want to come with. The bike doesn’t really have another seat, but it’ll hold two if it has to.”

The man eyed him, face still blank. The look snagged on the patch on his shoulder. “You’re a wolf” 

“Yeah.”

“Where’s your pack?”

He shrugged. “California if they’ve been riding hard. Arizona if they haven’t. Good chance they took a detour into Nevada. No way to know for sure.” Standing up, he was a good six inches shorter than the man, who still had blood on his cheek. The long sleeves of a canvas jacket didn’t quite cover an angry red scar which disappeared under the cuff and emerged again from the collar of a navy blue shirt. If Hakoda hadn’t seen him handle a knife, he’d have pegged the guy as a grad student, or a townie way out of his depth. But there was that edge to him. And Hakoda couldn’t resist an edge. So he stepped over the long-cooled coals, licked his thumb, and wiped away the smear of blood. “But tie up the rest of that pretty hair if you want to keep it. The wind can get real nasty on the road.”

X

Hakoda actually forgot he had a passenger until he moved. The warmth of his body squeezed up against Hakoda’s back wasn’t so different from the heat of the sun behind them. Then a hand left his hip and gripped his right bicep. He shuddered slightly as he snapped out of the road trance his idle mind had a habit of slipping into, and focused on the hand, which slipped beneath his arm and signed ‘eat’, pointing at Hakoda’s mouth instead of his passenger’s. He sighed. The sun was high and only slightly west. Gas gauge was low but not desperate. He’d had two meals in the last 24 hours. He had no reason to stop. Except the guy had given him food. He may as well return the favor. He shifted his grip on the handlebars and fit his right hand into the waiting palm to sign ‘OK.’ The guy signed ‘thank you’ again using Hakoda’s mouth instead of his own. His fingertips brushed Hakoda’s lower lip and all he could do was hope that his shiver wasn’t too obvious. They took the next exit.

After a meal and a tank refill, there wasn’t much point to getting back on the road. He had enough cash for a motel room, but it would nearly clean him out. May as well put the time to use. His passenger was leaning against the saddle, tapping something into a phone as Hakoda walked over.

“I need to get some cash. Do you mind hanging out for a bit?”

“What for?” He didn’t look up from the phone.

“Room for the night. Unless you wanna sleep on the ground again.”

“I got it.” He tucked his phone away, straightened, and headed for the office with holy shit was that a wink? From the man with no facial muscles? An actual expression? And it was a wink?

When he returned sporting a shiny new room key Hakoda flashed him a grin and asked, “So are you my sugar daddy now or what?” That earned him a snort and, now that he was looking for it, a brief crinkle at the corners of his eyes. “I can find you some eyewear for tomorrow. Though you still have eyes so I guess you worked something out.”

“You didn’t notice, did you?” This close, Hakoda had to crane his neck to try and catch whatever was going on on that entirely too tempting face. It left his throat bare, and it was no coincidence that he realized that right as his eyes flicked over the corners of the other man’s mouth.

“Notice what, daddy?”

“You’re sleeping on the fucking floor.” But there were the creases again. Hakoda smiled too, wicked and unashamed.

X

Hot water hammered into his skin with stinging intensity, a far cry from a few days ago. It blasted away untold amounts of road grime, sweat, and black mood from the past week. Hakoda dipped his head into the spray and scrubbed at his scalp, letting his loose hair swing around to plaster over his closed eyes and mouth. It felt good to be clean again. Clean and not alone. Without the dismal fog clinging to his thoughts, it was easier to stop and consider what he was doing. Not that he was going to. But if he wanted, he could maybe think about the fact that they still didn’t know each others’ names, or that they were set to spend another several hours draped over each other like a pair of otters. If he was lucky, that one might even happen before they got back on the road. But he wasn’t going to think about that. He was just going to -

“The fuck did you do with my clothes?”

“Laundry.” Jesus how long had he been in the shower?

“Can’t just run off with a man’s clothes, what’s wrong with you?”

“Thought I was your sugar daddy. ‘S why I paid for it.” In theory, it shouldn’t be possible for someone to smirk without actually moving their face. But damned if the man on the bed wasn’t doing just that. And fuck if it wasn’t annoyingly hot.

“After some sugar then, daddy? Since I’m going to be naked for a while.” He clambered onto the bed, pushing his face right up into his companion’s, filling his personal space.

“If you call me daddy again-”

“You’re gonna make me sleep on the floor? Please.” He tapped the guy’s lower lip. “I’m already in your bed, and I don’t think you have it in you to kick me out.” Hakoda flopped onto his back, acutely aware of how high up his thigh the towel skirt was splitting, and loving every inch of it. The dance was on. It didn’t matter to him if he turned out to be dancing alone. This was what he liked to do. This - a less playful and more polished version - was always how he made his best money. Whether it was rich cougars who wanted to feel like they were wild or slinky businessmen who wanted to feel like they were winning at something. Hakoda could get under their skin, rifle through the pockets of their characters, peek up their skirts and leave them with their pants around their ankles. And they’d thank him for walking off with their cash. That was usually his favorite part. After their barely covered disdain, condescension, patronizing shoulder squeezes and ‘some advice, kid-’s, he’d come out on top, and they’d be too wrapped up in their own superiority to notice. But this dance was a different kind. And he could have a lot more fun with it.

Even after his clean clothes came back (accepted with a wink and a ‘thank you, daddy’) Hakoda opted to stay in his towel, only peeling it off once the lights went out and he wiggled between the sheets. In the dark he couldn’t watch for the fleeting microexpressions that flickered across his companion’s face, but if the hand curled around his bare hip and the face pressed into his shoulder were any indication, he was more than alright.

“Feel familiar?” So that’s how he’d kept his eyes shielded. He was right earlier - Hakoda hadn’t noticed.

“Feels nice.”

“You don’t have to get me goggles.”

“You don’t want to watch the scenery?”

“This is much more interesting.” He brushed his nose up Hakoda’s neck and pressed a hot, wet, open-mouthed kiss beneath his ear before whispering, “goodnight” and settling back as if Hakoda’s spine wasn’t humming with electricity and his cock wasn’t unbelievably hard just inches away from his fingertips. Tease. Perfect.

X

About an hour inside the California border, Hakoda was pulled lazily from the haze of road trance again by the familiar feeling of a hand leaving his hip. It rubbed absently down his thigh and back up, fingertips tracing the inner seam of his jeans. He was so hung up on that sensation that he didn’t notice the other hand slipping deftly beneath his shirt until a calloused palm scratched gently up his stomach to his chest. The hands were fine. He could manage the hands and the bike and his rapidly emptying head. Sure it was a balancing act, but he could do it. Then slightly chapped lips brushed over his neck. The road wobbled. Just a bit. Hakoda swore under his breath and pulled off at the next rest stop.

He kicked the stand down and swung out of the saddle, wheeling to face his companion in one fluid move. Before either of them had too much time to think, he had the taller man pressed against the wall, caged between his hands and a hard, knifelike smile.

“If you were willing to die for this dick you could have just said. I didn’t need a _demonstration._ ” He shoved a knee between two lean thighs and felt again what had been poking him in the ass for some time.

“That almost sounds like a man who wants to live.” The slight lift of an eyebrow nearly covered for the way he rocked infinitesimally against Hakoda’s leg.

“I’m not dying until I get that smart mouth on my cock.”

“Hell of a way to talk to your daddy, sugar.” The motion of his hips was definitely noticeable now, and the tight control he kept on his face slipped slightly as the corners of his mouth curved into a real smirk. God help him, it was even hotter than the not-smirk.

“Get in a fucking stall, _daddy._ ” Hakoda hissed.

It really was fortunate he always carried spare hair ties. Otherwise he may never have learned how beautiful wavy black hair looked wrapped around his fist, matched by molten black eyes staring up at him, riveted to his pleasure. And after that, no god or man or earth-shattering orgasm was going to keep him from sinking to his knees and memorizing the taste of this man’s skin, the hot musk of his sweat, and the quiet shuddering moan that slipped from his throat as he spilled into Hakoda’s.

When they got back on the bike, he was surprised to feel long arms wrap around his waist and a hot whisper in his ear.

“Try to stay alive.”

X

“This is about as far as my bike can take you.” Hakoda leaned on the saddle in a crowded beach parking lot. The late afternoon ocean roared dully as birds and children screeched indistinguishably.

His friend shucked off his boots and tied his canvas jacket around his hips. “Walk with me.” 

He did, losing his boots and shirt and enjoying the sun on his shoulders. Sand encrusted the hems of his jeans and salt from the sea and his sweat clung to his skin. It somehow wasn’t sticky and chafing and claustrophobic the way Miami had been. Instead it felt like solitude, blown wide open in the vast, comforting indifference of the ocean. For once there were no stakes, no game to call, no tab to close. Nothing breathing down his neck but the breeze. There was only the dance, even if it was coming to an end. When they turned to walk back, Hakoda jostled their shoulders together playfully.

His friend draped an arm over him and pulled him close. “You’re gonna be burnt.”

“It goes from red to brown overnight.” He slipped his arm around the other man’s waist, partly to steady himself. Partly to stay pressed against his side. As if he belonged there. As if he could belong anywhere so peaceful. The sun sat low in his peripheral vision, drawing neon scribbles in the corner of his eye. He turned his head away, looking instead at his friend’s face. The crinkles at the corners of his eyes hadn’t vanished like they usually did. His skin glowed in the golden light of almost sunset, every bit as gorgeous as he had been in the flickering shadow of the firelight and the harsh fluorescence of the rest stop. “Where will you go?”

“South for a while. Then back north.”

Hakoda nodded. “My brothers are in Sacramento. We’ll probably be up and down the west coast until August.”

“Sounds like a good time.”

“We’ll see.” Running with the pack had never been bad, exactly. He missed his brothers. But the dance was ending here. In a parking lot by the beach, full of the smell of hot asphalt and seaweed. And he knew in his bones that none of the ones that followed would ever compare.

They tugged their boots back on. Hakoda wiggled his shirt back over his sticky chest and tender shoulders. Then he grabbed his former passenger by the belt and hauled him close, baring his own throat and teeth again to smile and whisper against his mouth, “see you around, daddy.”

“See you around, sugar.”

X

The kiss lingered in his mind for weeks afterwards. It had been absolute, unadulterated honesty. Two boys kissing the way boys do when kissing is all that’s left and nobody is walking away happy so may as well put all you have into it - artless, exquisite, selfish, and pure. When he jolted awake in a pile of snoring, leather-clad bodies and the ghost of a hand on the nape of his neck slipped back into memory, Hakoda choked back a sob and tried not to think about how bad he had fucked up. Or how fucked up he was over it. When red-tipped fingers caressed the hard angle of his jaw, he did his best to smile at the woman buying him dinner and forget about a meal shared in silence and mystery. She later did a line off his chest, somehow looking elegant as she did, and as she laughed too loud and too long, Hakoda let himself be miserable. Not like she could notice, in her state. Then, in a personal hell of neon and glitter and tuneless, throbbing bass, someone wrapped an arm around his waist and purred in his ear, “hey sugar, wanna get out of here?” And that, finally, was too much.

“You don’t get to call me sugar,” he snarled. The boys laughed when the bouncers threw him out. One or two sat with him on the curb as he lost his guts and $27 worth of sugary drinks, hands steady on his back, bewildered looks exchanged behind his head. At least he didn’t get any on his boots.

X

The pack didn’t go north for the winter. They didn’t spend it in Miami again, small blessing. But Tennessee had little to recommend it. Missouri and Kansas even less. The Wolves made their annual pilgrimage to Las Vegas, and the road stretched before him like his future. Flat and black and just waiting to eat him alive. The whisper was constant from the moment they got up over 60 mph to the moment they peeled off the next exit. He didn’t listen anymore. He didn’t want its silky touch. But no matter how much he wished it gone, it would wake him in the night, telling him to get on his bike and go. South, he said. Then back north. And he would have to shake himself hard and force himself to let go again and again and again.

They crossed the border into Canada just before summer hit with a passion. Straight up the middle of Alberta, then west, then north again, zig-zagging across the country and alternating highways and back roads. Just far enough from civilization to be a real pain in the ass, Hakoda’s bike broke down again. The pack stopped, one of their unspoken rules, while he fiddled around in the machine’s guts to try and get it at least limping again. They were prepared to camp out on the side of the road anyways, but when it became clear he wasn’t going to be successful they ramped it up to full party. His brothers always did that before they left someone behind, and Hakoda never knew if it was kind or cruel. It was the Wolves, though, so a little of both was a safe bet.

X

He drifted unwillingly back into consciousness with a cool steady drizzle on his face that did nothing to soothe the 9 penny nails stabbing away behind his eyeballs. A taste like gasoline in his throat had nothing to do with his bike, and everything to do with his brothers’ concept of a good time. Clapton was right, he thought vaguely, when you wanna get down, down on the ground... The grey sky hung low and oppressive over him, slowly dampening his clothes until he began to shiver. That finally got him up out of the ditch. His bike wasn’t far off. A lone pickup rumbled past. Brake lights spiked into his eyes.

“Need a lift?” The driver called.

“Yeah, if you got one.” His voice sounded wrecked. Not sure quite what had done that, but if he remembered correctly there had been jokes about howling at the moon. So that might be a clue.

“Help me get your bike in the back. I’ll drop you up the road.”

“Thank you.” He managed to neither throw up nor pass out maneuvering the useless machine into the bed of the truck, which was a good sign. The driver wasn’t chatty either, probably gathering enough from Hakoda’s ravaged face to know he wasn’t going to be good conversation. An hour passed in silence, and Hakoda was too lost in his hangover to care whether it was awkward or not.

“Alright, here’s a garage. They’re open, too. Lucky you.”

“Thanks.” He reached for his wallet, forestalled by a raised hand and a ‘just helping out, no need for that’

“If you’re sure.”

“I am. Just help me get your bike back down.” He briefly contemplated just kicking the damn thing off the tailgate, but maneuvered it back to the ground instead. Hakoda shook the driver’s hand and turned to see a woman in coveralls emerging from the garage.

“What do we have here?” She eyed him first, then sized up the bike.

“Broke down beyond my ability to fix. Couldn’t pinpoint what exactly.”

“Alright, we’ll take a look. Why don’t you go sit in the office and dry off some.” She smiled at him as he handed over the key, and it felt like pure warmth. He considered that a testament to how shredded his mind was, but attempted to grin back anyways. In the office he downed two plastic cups of fountain water, then availed himself of the neat little tea nook labeled “for our valued customers.” It wasn’t long until he was dozing in a plastic chair with a styrofoam cup of green tea balanced in his lap. The nails in his eyes shrank from 9d to 5d and once his skin was dry he was finally able to stop shivering.

Hakoda felt the cup leave his thigh and jerked out of his doze, convinced he had dropped it. He hadn’t. A long-fingered, scarred hand had taken it gently from his loosening grasp. Before his eyes could follow the arm up to its owner’s face, someone said, “you look like hell.” 

He didn’t need to look. He knew the moment he saw the scar. He knew when he heard the voice. But look he did. And then he laughed.

“You have grease on your face.”

Hakoda’s former passenger hauled him up out of the chair and wrapped him in a tight hug. “Good to see you, sugar.”

“Good to see you, too… daddy.” He pressed his face into the taller man’s neck, wishing idly that they could keep doing just this approximately forever.

“Okay this is definitely not what I asked you to do.” The woman’s voice had a hint of laughter to it.

“Kya,” his friend turned, “meet my sugar baby.” Hakoda was glad he turned too, if only to see the way her jaw dropped.

“That’s not a sugar baby, Bato. That’s a zombie in a leather jacket. No offense.”

Hakoda shrugged. “We’ve been over that. Pleased to meet you. I’m Hakoda.”

X

He slouched against the wall of the payphone booth, waiting for his brother to pick up.

“What do you want.”

“It’s me. Just wanted to call and let you know not to wait for me. I’ve got a place to stay.”

“No shit? She real cute?”

He laughed. “Yeah. Real cute.”

“Alright, best of luck, brother. See you around.”

“Love you.”

“Love you, too.” The line clicked off.

He walked back across the street to the diner where he slid in beside Kya.

“-will not use those nicknames in my presence.” She skewered Bato with a glare.

He met her eyes, impassive as ever, then looked to Hakoda. “What do you think, sugar?”

“I think I’m gonna call you mama and there’s nothing you can do about it.” He blocked her elbow before it reached his ribs, but it still hurt his arm. Bato snorted at his wince.

“Careful. She’s not as nice as me. She absolutely will kick you out. Isn’t that right, honey?” The expressionless smirk was just as sexy directed at someone else, even if it was wiped out half a second later by his own wince. Probably from being kicked under the table.

Despite all that, Kya smiled at them both, and it still felt like sunlight. “Alright, Beavis and Butthead. Decide your orders. Dinner’s on me tonight.”

♥

**Author's Note:**

> * The elusive french phrase is L'appel du Vide. Literally the call of the void.
> 
> * also come yell at me about this on Tungle. @oliver-perks. #noragrets


End file.
